““Genius is divine perseverance.” Divine patience I believe he originally used, perseverance is better in my opinion. Genius I cannot claim nor even extra brightness but perseverance all can have.”

As a matter of fact and experience, the more power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes.

The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we but be true to ourselves.

What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.

All things come to him who waits – provided he knows what he is waiting for.

America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.

It’s harder for a leader to be born in a palace than to be born in a cabin.

Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.

Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action.

We are not put into this world to sit still and know; we are put into it to act.

Excesses accomplish nothing. Disorder immediately defeats itself.

Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit.

Men grow by having responsibility laid upon them.

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

Men are not put into this world to go the path of ease, they are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle.

A man’s rootage is more important than his leafage.

I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. No course of my choosing or of their (nations at war) will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.

A star that shines the brightest is the one that had to explode the hardest. My love, you are a supernova.

Every freckle, mole, dimple, and scar, shine bright in my body’s constellation of stars.

It dawned on me with blinding brightness. I realized: I had jumped into another rare kind of stratosphere – one that only a handful of people in every generation are lucky enough to know.

Everyone wants to shine bright like a diamond, but no one wants to get cut.

Yes, you are like the sun so always shine bright.

Will someone else’s life be brighter tomorrow, because of what you have done today?

Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.